The McVey family was involved in the hardware business for 90 years or so in the Los Angeles area. The stores were in the Annandale section of Highland Park, in Hollywood, in Culver City and finally in Temple City (out in the San Gabriel Valley). The McVeys are out of the hardware business, as of Summer 2006, save for these notes and musings, assembled in Cambridge.
Sundry philosophical ruminations and a gathering of bibliographic references relating to hardware retailing (and to a lesser extent, tools, nails, etc.), may be found at a separate page on hardware store literature.
New scans and slow load-times prompted a reorganization of this material early in 2011. The new material is mostly at the Annandale and Ruth McVey pages. I have tried to avoid separating material devoted to people (e.g., Ruth or Victor) from the hardware
narrative that gave rise to this project in the first place. I don’t want to lose the messy overlap of lives and stores.
This account gravitates, as the McVeys did, around the hardware business. I have more knowledge about the McVey family than I do of the Ronaynes or Murphys (or further back, Curtis), on my mother Patricia’s side or of the Manns (and Odette) on my grandmother Ruth McVey’s side.
John McVey